310 SHAKESPEARE'S [TOAD. 



or backer parts, wherewithal she infecteth the air, for 

 revenge of them that do annoy her ; and she knoweth the 

 weakness of her teeth, and therefore she gathereth abun- 

 dance of air into her body, wherewithal she greatly swelleth, 

 and then, by sighing, uttereth that infected air as near the 

 person that offendeth her as she can. A Toad useth one 

 certain herb wherewithal it preserveth the sight, and also 

 resisteth the poison of spiders, whereof I have heard this 

 credible history related from the mouth of the good Earl 

 of Bedford. It fortuned as the said Earl travelled in 

 Bedfordshire, near unto a market -town called Owbourn 

 [? Woburn], some of his company espied a Toad fighting 

 with a spider, under a hedge ; and the Earl saw how the 

 spider still kept her standing, and the Toad divers times 

 went back from the spider, and did eat a .piece of an 

 herb, which to his judgment was like a plantain ; at the 

 last, the Earl, having seen the Toad do it often, and still 

 return to the combat against the spider, he commanded 

 one of his men to go, and with his dagger to cut off 

 that herb : presently after the Toad returned to seek it, 

 and, not finding it, swelled and broke in pieces. [This 

 story is better told in Lupton's " Notable Things," bk. vi. 

 30, but without the names, and with slight differences.] 

 There was a monk in England who had in his chamber 

 divers bundles of green rushes, wherewithal he used to 

 strew his chamber at his pleasure ; it happened on a day 

 after dinner, that he fell asleep upon one of those bundles 

 of rushes, with his face upward, and, while he there slept, 

 a great Toad came and sat upon his lips, bestriding him 

 in such manner as his whole mouth was covered. Now 

 when his fellows saw it, they were at their wits' end, for 

 to pull away the Toad was an unavoidable death, but to 

 suffer her to stand still upon his mouth was a thing more 

 cruel than death ; and therefore one of them espying a 

 spider's web in the window, wherein was a great spider, he 

 did advise that the monk should be carried to that window, 

 and laid with his face upward right underneath the spider's 

 web. And as soon as the spider saw her adversary the 

 Toad, she presently wove her thread, and descended down 

 upon the Toad, at the first meeting whereof the spider 

 wounded the Toad, so that it swelled, and at the second 

 meeting it swelled more, but at the third time the spider 



